paulhar

Maybe this should be 'suggestions for the software', but wouldn't it be nice if a sub got to see a recap of the play? This might also be useful in the Main Bridge Club. Countless number of times I have popped into an empty seat in the middle of a hand. Requests to redeal have been refused or ignored. I usually just end up leaving but I look like the nonsocial one. Then having to wait a few more minutes for an empty seat opposite a partner whose profile looks compatible with mine. I just don't understand people expecting you to play out a hand not knowing about it.

4th hand I think the conditions are important. With the acutal hand I pass under any conditions (except perhaps playing against a pair which rates to give up at least a trick on either offense or defense!) Let sleeping spades lie. With the majors switched, with all due respect to the rule of 15, I think my two tens and nine make up for the lost point and expect to go plus more than 50% of the time (if pard has only 4 spades, the 4-3 might play OK, taking the taps in the short hand) so at matchpoints I think I would open. I would choose 1D rather than 2D to keep spades in the picture. At IMPs it's a different story. The conditions stated us vul, them not. With virtually no chance for game, the vulnerability is against us, hundreds going to the opponents and fifties going to us. While I would open at equal vulnerability (similar to matchpoints), at this vulnerability, I'll let sleeping hundreds lie. Interestingly enough, if the hand were freaky enough that game for either side were likely despite three passes, opening vul vs not would be an edge since the potential gain is around 600 and the potential loss is only 400. Opening bid style matters too. My regular partner and I tend to pass a lot of garbage that others would open (such as 4-3-3-3 12-counts.) If the opponents are frisky openers, or play a system which opens light systemically, such as Precision, then partner is the one with the cards and I need to open this hand (the one with 3-1-6-3.) All the plus factors don't make up for the lack of spades in the original hand though and I would pass the 1-3-6-3 even if I expect our side to have 22HCP.

I don't understand - how would creating a par datum change the fact that you want to overbid against weak defense? Unless the hands used are defender-proof! Normal deals with par determined by Deep Finesse or whatever will not change the fact that the tournaments are determined by the worst defenders in the field. In fact, the structure of tournaments is such that you must depend on poor defense to win. You will not win any cross IMPs tournaments on BBO averaging +2 IMPs per board. You may place well, but you won't win. If you win, you have to assume your opponents aren't going to play well and act accordingly. If they play well, you couldn't win this tourney anyway, better luck next time. You want to reward playing well instead of this wild swinging necessary to win? In a 12 board X-imp tourney, only count your 5th thru 10th best IMP scores, throwing out the top 4 and the bottom 2. Then this wild swinging hoping to score a huge number of IMPs against a weak pair will cease, as your windfall will be thrown out. The steady Eddies will win. It will also throw out the speculative doubles that are necessary to win these events too. I remember subbing for the last two boards in a cross IMP event. I came in negative a couple of IMPs. On the last two boards, we played a pair that were wildly trying to catch up (they must have been down more than a couple of IMPs.) Having nothing close to a penalty double on either board, I doubled based on nothing more than the sound of their auction (they basically bid as if they were overbidding, stuff like 1NT-2H signoff-3NT) We picked up 25 IMPs on these two boards and my subbed partner went from under average to 2nd. Unfortunately, these are the types of things you have to do to win these things. You must play against weak defenders and overbid, and you have to hope others are doing the same against you so you can double 'em for a number. Look at the IMP scores required to win a tournament. They're phenominal! I tried playing steady bridge to win these things, it just doesn't work. I'll take my steady game into the Main Bridge Club, if you don't mind. I just don't see how having a par datum is going to help. People will still be out there trying to beat up on the weak pairs, or the shooting pairs. And the wildest bidders and the awful defenders will still determine the event. What you need is some scoring method that reduces the effect of these random results. Some tournaments, the leaders are playing against leaders. You're probably not going to get weak defense against a leader.

Yes, this is quite difficult. I know because I have to create 8 such deals for every lesson my wife teaches. The rule is: no bad bridge decision can be rewarded, and those bad decisions likely to be made by the students should be punished. As the level of the class increases, this becomes a much harder task. I can typically create a beginner's hand illustrating a specified bidding and play concept in 10-15 minutes - with the contracts in the wrong strain at the correct level going down even on bad defense. As the targeted students improve to where these simple hands are simply not appropriate anymore, it becomes a more difficult construction to punish bad bridge. This is especially true in deals where both sides are bidding, which are more interesting for the students. In some of the hands created for a higher-level intermediate class, it has sometimes taken me a couple of hours to create a hand to teach a certain concept where someone gets a worse result (or at least not a better one) for any error. A tough thing about building these par hands is the fact that sometimes one side's error might induce the other side into a greater error that wasn't available if the first side's error hadn't happened. Ideally, you wouldn't want the first side to gain from their error. A typical example is when N/S overbid to reach an awful suit contract and East leads fourth best from AKQx to let it make! Granted, N/S were going to be well over average for getting that lead anyway, but N/S are getting a lot more than they deserve in any kind of par contest. In theory, if the hands are properly constructed, overbidding against a weak pair should pay off a lot less in this optimized par contest than it should in real life. If it's that difficult to create such par deals for intermediate classes, then I would think it would be a total nightmare to create such deals at the difficulty level that would interest BBO members! What makes it even more difficult is that something I would call reasonable play you might call an error, and vice versa.

While channel flipping on TV last night I ran across a poker tournament where you could see the participants' cards but it was delayed 5 minutes so that nobody could radio the information to the players. While this would be a nightmare for the software writers, if someone watched their favorite stars in tourneys 5 or 10 minutes delayed there would be no possibility for cheating via a kibitzer and everybody would be happy. A side benefit would be (especially in clocked tourneys) that you could get subs from the kibitzers of the same tourney, since they're seeing the hands delayed, they would be quite unlikely to play any hands they've seen. I almost made this offer myself but I realized that I would be laughed outta the place. I might acutally be a good kibitzee because I frequently make a running commentary of my mistakes after the hand. (This can take awhile :) ) However, you'd have to catch me one of the eight times a year I'm acually logged on to BBO :P

I can see why nobody wants to be the first poster on this one! I would want to be in game, and I think that 4D is nonforcing. Maybe in theory it shouldn't be, but I would guess that most would take it that way (unless they play negative free bids.) Maybe double and then bid 5D over 3NT or 4C.

I believe that 1D/2C is not game forcing in 2/1 without partnership agreement because of the lack of a forcing notrump over 1D. Many hands would be unbiddable if 2C were game forcing. My regular partner and I have had success playing 2C as game forcing. To do this, we have to play 1D-2NT (and 1C-2NT for consistency) as non-forcing, showing 11-12, and more importantly, 1D-3C as invitational, and certainly passable, showing long clubs (6 expected) and the strength for a traditional 2C response. Both these responses deny a four card major. (Yes, Ch., I know I'm stating the obvious again but it might not be obvious to everybody in this forum.) Without prior agreement, I would treat a 2C response to 1D the same way that you did before you played 2/1.

The reason you don't see that too often is that it would greatly slow down the game while each player explained his bids/plays to the audience. Most players like a fast game. Now, if you could get some slow pairs together, you might have a shot... I could just see someone saying "I'm going to dummy to lead a club since if I can sneak past RHO's ace I have nine tricks", and then realizing that he said this to the room instead of the kibitzers :) By the way, as a plug for Fred's software sales, it appears that Larry Cohen's "Play Bridge with Me" CD's might be just what you're looking for. You're essentially kibitzing him in a Life Master Pairs (or something) and he talks through all his decisions with you, giving you a chance to make the decisions before he tells you, but essentially bidding and playing the hands as they did at his table with his explanations.

Thank you xx1943!

A thread was recently started by someone who was concerned that her ability to watch good bridge in tournaments would be taken away. This thread degenerated to a discussion apparently had many times on BBO about kibitzing tournaments and the cheating that ensues by allowing it. One player pointed out that kibitzing a topflight player in a tournament is to watch better bridge than watching him in the Main Bridge Club where the topflight player might not have a regular partner, and where he might be screwing around. So, I'd like to start a discussion on the following topic: How can someone who wants to watch good bridge be allowed to? I would like this topic to include NO references to cheating in tournaments (except links if someone feels it's necessary.) First, I'll in my two cents. I'm hoping that many others of you come up with diverse ideas unrelated to mine, and improvements for mine. While I could be convinced that watching somebody in a tournament with their regular partner might produce a better standard of bridge than the Main Bridge Club, I would be surprised if the level in a tournament was better than that in a good team match. People start team matches all the time, some of them have high caliber competition and others have the hoi palloi. However, the incidence of regular partnerships rates to be very high, higher even than in a tournament where there is a Partnership Desk. But, here's the rub. Although there are usually several of these team matches going on at one time, how does the kibitzer looking for good bridge know where the best bridge is being played? I'm sure that eight superstars don't just log on to BBO and say 'I'm looking for seven other superstars to play a good team match." No, these things have to be planned ahead. The obvious solution would be to put all these impromptu team matches on Vugraph. I would guess that there would be great bridge to watch any time of the day or night. I'm not sure how difficult this would be though. Let's assume that this is an impossible solution. We could have a forum here where a good match to watch could be listed. The downside? We have 1908 registered members of the forum and probably most of the best players are not in that group. They don't even know that there are players out there just itching to watch them. They would probably be quite flattered that there are. I presume you can make kibitzers silent in a team match (except to each other), so the good player should have no problem whatsoever being kibitzed. If all the decent players were asked to post somewhere when they planend to play a high-level match, some would disregard it as a pain in the butt, but others wuold give back to the game by taking a few seconds to post it. (Posting the systems played would be helpful too as each studious kibitzer would love to kibitz a pair playing the same general approach that he does.) OK, another idea. That 'bridge news' could have today's planned good matches. That way, the wannabe kibitzers would know just where to go and when. When eight topflight players get together for a team match, it's almost certainly for practice and the chances of cheating are almost zero because there's no reason. OK, so I broke my own rule! But enough of that. We have serious students of the game on BBO that want to watch bridge at its highest level. I think we have the capability to let them do that and we need only find the best way to do it. By the way, I've frequently seen kibitzers in my room. Clearly there has to be better bridge going on somewhere! :D What this tells me is there are a lot of people that like to kibitz. Most of the time I've seen kibitzers, my partner and opponents were fine players. This was probably the best table they could find at the time. I would guess that most of these kibitzers would have rather watched two regular partnerships competing. Another idea is to mark the topflight tables in the Main Bridge Club that are intending to play seriously. This probably won't work as people will overrate themselves. But if you put serious constraints on it, such as: (a) Both pairs must be at least semi-regular partnerships. Regular is better. (:lol: Everybody must intend to play serious bridge. (One of the complaints about not being allowed to kibitz tourneys was that the top players screw around in the Main Bridge Club because it doesn't matter.) © Everybody must be at least a certain competency level. This would be set high on purpose to shut out people who think others might enjoy kibitzing them when in fact the kibitzers will just shake their head and ask "Why am I watching him?" This might be something like having won a match in international competition, so that someone from a country where you can be a top player and still not be any good won't qualify because your team never beat anybody. If you don't have enough tables playing that meet all these constraints, maybe you have to lower the requirements for © becuase there just aren't enough of them around. But it should be high enough to expect that your above average kibitzer isn't going to frequently say "This player is just terrible!". Kibitzing a table with four starred players sitting at it could fall down due to (a) and (:D above. And maybe © too.

1. These tournament directors do a heck of a job for nothing and deserve nothing but our thanks. Please don't alienate them. Although I'm less likely to want to play in a tournament after having seen this thread and the others before it on the same subject, there are others that want to and if our tournament directors decide that their time is better spent elsewhere, BBO and all its members lose. While we might disagree with their position on something, we must not make a thankless job seem even more thankless. 2. That having been said, everyone has to realize that if you post on BBO, you should be prepared to get a good ribbing if your position isn't popular. There's a lot of people with a good (?) sense of humor on this board and it makes the posts much more fun to read. If you happen to be the butt of their humor this time, suck it up. We've all been there. If you think you've been unmercifully flogged, it probably means you either misinterpreted the post, or it was somebody's misguided sense of humor. 3. As Ben has said before, cheating at tournaments has been discussed a lot already. This thread was started out (I assume) because Rona was concerned that her ability to kibitz competitive bridge would be taken away. Chamaco has vehemently expressed this concern also. While I personally could care less about the right, I strongly support their view that they should be able to watch good bridge. Instead of having the same argument for at least the fourth time, perhaps we should figure out a way to make that happen. Because people interested in making that happen probably aren't reading this thread anymore, I'm going to start a new thread devoted to that. This thread will be in 'General BBO discussion' since tournaments themselves may play less of a role in this whole discussion.

1D. Good enough for my students, good enough for me. ACBL Club Series points: 11HCP+2 for length Other teaching methods might include 2 or 3 for shortness instead. Meets all the tests. Rule of 20: 11HCP+6D+3 next longest suit = 20 Rule of 22: Rule of 20 + quick tricks, add the 2 quicks for 22 The Kaplan-Rubens hand evaluator at: http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff/knr.cgi?ha...+QT7+AKT954+Q83 comes up with 14.20 points for this hand. (I would open if the 10 and 9 of diamonds were small.) Has 2 quick tricks. There are no downgrades for unguarded honors. Has an easy rebid. Even a good lead directional bid (not necessary for an opener.) Partner should not be disappointed with this dummy in 3NT or 4H if he has a minimum opener without or with five hearts respectively. Partner should not expect any more than this if he doubles 4S. Need I say more?

Good point! Anyone who is deeply interested in this thread would do well to do a keyword search and find the other pertinent threads. Chances are that what you want to say plus what everybody else is saying has been said before. Unfortunately, you get newbies on the board (like me) that don't realize this and everybody has to say the same thing again for the benefit of the people that weren't on the forum before. And the newbies feel like they have to say their piece, even though it's been pointed out several times before. Any of you that have been on the board could simply mention that this discussion has already been beaten to death (search for keyword: (pertinent keyword) in forum (pertinent forum)) so that people can see what's already been said before they beat the same horse to death. Putting the link to the previous forum is great - how do you do that? While I'm asking, how do people put those quotes from other posts in the middle of their posts? I seem to only be able to quote ONE post and put the quote at the top. Clearly I need to be educated. A beginner's guide to the BBO forum :lol: ? Naturally, one could search for every topic but it would be time-wasting because I assume that most topics are new.

I need to be educated on these squeeze possibilities that are better than a 50% finesse that gain three tricks. You have 3 spade tricks, 2 hearts, 1 diamond (by promotion), and 3 clubs. You need three more tricks. Chances are pretty good that you're going to have to finesse the D10 later anyway. Even if you win the King and Queen of diamonds early, you only have 10 tricks, and need a large slice of luck to make 12. You have to guess right away whether to play for diamonds 3-3 or a miracle in clubs and hearts. And, of course, the heart finesse is going right into the player with the ace of diamonds if your K&Q win. IMO the player who finessed the D10 didn't do anything wrong.

Wouldn't you make a takeout double after both a 1S or a 2S opening? One thing you neglected to point out that if you pass out a 1-bid you need seven tricks to get a plus score where you only need six tricks against a passed-out two bid. While the difference is miniscule, it is a small point in favor of passing the two bid. I also agree that you should be agressive with shortness in their suit against a 2-bid but I think you should be just as agressive (if not more so) against their 1-bid. I think it's clear to make a takeout double of 1S with S-x H-A10xx D-AQxx C-10xxx at any vulnerability. Partner's subsequent bidding is going to cramp the opponent's style, and you may steal some partials. Doubling an opening 2S bid is a little rich for me although I'm sure there are those who would.

Acutally, I wouldn't be using ANY rules on this hand. A hand of bridge has two parts. A great surprise to most of our students, these two parts are interrelated. You're allowed to use information from the bidding in the play! I'm not being facetious here, but this seems to be a point that's been missed during this whole thread. LHO, a player on one of the best pairs in the city, has bid 3S, and then 4S vulnerable with only three trump. Do you think they took a sudden liking to you? There must be some other reason. 4S is a travesty of the Law of Total Tricks, that is, unless LHO thinks your side has about sixteen hearts. Frankly, I'm surprised that LHO had even one heart. RHO made one peep, and then stayed silent. (S)He was happy defending hearts. LHO is doing something rediculous if (s)he has two hearts, and just begging to be doubled for a number. However, good players know (but aren't telling!) that the Law of Total Tricks understates the total tricks when the shorter trump hand is also the one who is short in the opponents' suit. Indeed, LHO had one heart and only three spades so there are extra tricks avaliable by trumping hearts in his hand. If you lead trump, you give them time to set up diamonds. With only 17 total trump (9 for you, 8 for them), you would expect 17 total tricks, and yet you can make 5♥ while they can make 8 tricks in ♠, a whopping 19 total tricks! LHO knows this because he has the singleton heart. If you creep into his mind and figure out how he could possibly bid 4S, it would be almost impossible to get it wrong. P.S. You're doing my many potential partners a favor by keeping me busy replying to your posts, thus keeping me off BBO :( P.P.S. I like your 3H bid P.P.P.S how can you make 6H? Don't you have to lose a spade and either a club or a club ruff?

You are absolutely right in counting the spades in the empty spaces. I don't think you can count the clubs since all that did was remove the remote possibility of a 5-0 split. To quote an example, let's say LHO opens 3S, pard doubles, and you bid 4H. You need to find the heart layout. LHO leads out the top three spades while you and partner follow three times (some takeout double, pard!) and RHO discards two diamonds and a club. You can remove LHO's seven spades from the empty spaces but I don't think you can remove those diamonds or that club from RHO's. RHO had to play something. He was dealt 13 non-spade cards, and of course, he's not going to play a heart. So, whatever he plays, it doesn't give you any more information than you already had - he was dealt 13 non-spades. So, I think he still has 13 empty spaces until you find out the distribution of one of the minors for sure. Any other suggestions? I had one :) Keep track of your 9 card fits missing queens. I'm challenging some pretty tough company here - Zia, Barry Crane, and Easley Blackwood. I'm up to the challenge - I think the rule I proposed is the only one of the four based on common sense against a good pair. (Against a bad pair, Zia's rule makes sense too. But this stuff about queens lying over jacks :) :( )

Always an opinion here. :D I'd be afraid to bid 3H for fear that it could be passed. If partner makes a game try, knowing that I only have two spades, it seems clear to me that we want to be in game. Give partner ♠AQJ76 ♥KQ65 ♦2 ♣A65, a typical hand for a 3C bid, (the worse of the two bids you could hear, since it makes a queen worthless instead of a jack), you need only find the heart jack (plus spades 4-2) to make game. You have some additional chances in clubs. The opponents won't always lead diamonds; sometimes the opening leader thinks he has to cut down on ruffs. It's a lot clearer over 3D where you have 9 useful points. I guess I would bid 4H, catering to 5-5, unless I thought there was the slightest chance that partner might think it was a splinter in support of his minor! Bidding the other minor could hardly be misunderstood (kind of a weird 4SF - it can't possibly be natural now.) If I thought there was a shot at both of these being misunderstood, I have to bite the bullet and bid 4S which is probably where we'll end up anyway. I'm not going to cater to partner's singleton honor in the fourth suit since I think he should bid 2NT over 2S on that hand.

Many thanks to Ben who has pointed out that this has all been discussed three months ago. Serious followers of this thread would do well to read that thread also. It brings up a point not mentioned yet in this thread about players playing form the same IP. It would be a shame if I could get my favorite partner (that I'm married to) to play a tournament online, and then be accused of cheating for winning a tournament from the same IP. A lot of couples play together on BBO and in this day of networks, most of them are on the same IP and yet most of them do not cheat. Maybe a couple of them might say 'What do we play in this situation?' once in a while but I would guess that these would be in the minority. And allowing these couples raises the level of bridge being played, because couples tend to have firmer understandings than the average pair you'll encounter on BBO. There was also mention of catching cheaters by sticking in a few 'test hands' where unusual actions would enhance the cheater's score but enough of them would mark him as a cheater. The problem is that once someone is barred for suspicious behavior, the guy gets a new Userid and the cheater is back. Perhaps an enhancement to the software is that instead of barring said cheater, you just make it so his version of Bridge Base is 'buggy' - intentional bugs that nobody knows about - eventually he'll grumble that the software is no good and go somewhere else which gets the desired effect. But hey - we've got a lot of great minds working together on this Forum and some good ideas are going to come out. Certainly there must be a way that these serious students of the game can watch good high-level bridge without the participants clowning around, without increasing the potential for cheating. I've got a few ideas but I'd like to see others discuss it.

Hi - I was hoping to find out what is considered "standard" for people that don't play conventions and got advertisements for conventions instead :D I know it's easier with conventions and I play one myself. However, for the newer player, artificiality is confusing. We have a student that won't ever bid 2C because he has heard on two different occasions that 2C is reserved for something else! (Once when learning weak 2 bids and the other time when learning the signoff bids over 1NT.) So, now the poor fellow won't overcall 2C, won't rebid 2C, etc. My theory is that newer players should get the basics down first before learning conventions (I guess I would make an exception for Stayman and Blackwood, since all their friends play them.) In any event, I have ideas about how responder playing no artificial bids should respond over a 2NT rebid and I wanted to find out whether they were standard or a figment of my imagination. It's hard to find out the truth because everybody plays some convention here. I think (assuming no conventions) that any bid over 2NT is forcing; you pay off when responder is weak and long in hearts. Responder bids 3H with 5 or more hearts, and opener, without 3 hearts, bids 3S on the way to 3NT with 4 spades. Responder bids 3S over 2NT to cater to 4-4 in the majors to cater to opener having bypassed them. I don't think any major suit fits are lost at the game level using these. Cascade seems to back up my position. If anyone else has an opinion on what is Standard (if no artificial conventions of any kind are allowed), please let me know. It's a lot easier when responder bid 1S first - responder can bid 3H with 4H & 5S, and can bid 3S with 5S without 4H and can bid 4H with 5-5 with a fit guaranteed unless opener bid 2NT offshape. With a 5-5 mildly interested in slam, responder can bid 3H intending to correct 3NT to 4H but giving opener a chance to cuebid a minor with a great fit (oops - I guess that's artificial!)

(Later in post: team games) Hard to believe that someone would waste the rare opportunity to play with four decent players in the Main Bridge Lobby and then screw around. Maybe they know each other and can do this all the time. But when I find a roomful of decent players (some would say that room couldn't include me :D ), I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to play high-level bridge without egregious mistakes on every hand. It seems that the other players must be in the same boat, because I've played some pretty tough games in the Main Bridge Club. And if one of them does screw around and our partnership jumps out to a 15 IMP lead, the bridge gets a lot tougher, because, by golly, it's embarrassing to be down 15 IMPs to me! Granted, you can't tell in advance which tables to watch because the tables marked 'experts only' seem to be popluated with less-than-expert players. However, you can mark the people worth kibitzing as 'champions' or 'friends' or whatever and when you see four of them at a table, and they're not your Italian champs screwing around, then it's a table worth watching. Of course, the rating system would have come in handy here, but I've already lost that battle, so I'll give up. BB has many team games. These tend to be a higher level of play than the Main Bridge Club. You get to see the same four players play several hands together. Clearly it will be obvious after a couple of hands whether the table is worth watching or not. Again, if they're worth watching, mark 'em as champs or friends with a comment that they're worth kibitzing, as they'll probably be playing many more team games. These are probably also regular partnerships. I wouldn't be afraid of asking some of these people privately whether they are planning on playing in any team games that you can watch. My guess is that they'll be flattered. I wouldn't be surprised if you got replies if you posted a query on the Forum asking when the top players intended to play team matches. Also, in one of the 2-table team games (also in the tournament room), the winning strategy is once again to play good bridge. Nobody wants to lose one of these, so the bridge will probably match the calibre of the players. The one downside is that these people might be playing a system you don't understand. Best of all is to be able to kibitz pairs playing a system similar to the one you play. I find that I learn more by playing than by watching. After watching a single team match, it's probably time to take your newfound knowledge and play. After all, we learn from our mistakes and if you're watching, you can't make any.

A recent post included: "PS whats your first name? (handle which was last name ommitted) sounds awfully rude and formal. " When I looked at my profile, I noticed that there didn't seem to be a spot for my full name. It wouldn't matter in my case but in this case the original poster could have been spared being called rude if his first name were available in his profile. I'm talking about the profile on the FORUM, not the one on BBO. Could there be a spot for it?

Yes, I was suprised to click my own handle and not find my full name in my profile. I didn't see a spot for it. Maybe a suggestion for the software?

Maybe I'm the exception, but from what I've seen in the main bridge lobby as opposed to tournaments, I think otherwise. I think you would see a much higher level of bridge watching four decent players in the Main Bridge Club. The reasons are simple and motivated by the desire to win. When playing in the Main Bridge Club with a good partner against competent opponents, by best strategy for winning is to play my best possible bridge. A shaky double may cost double digit IMPs if it helps the declarer make the hand, and against good competition, these will be difficult to make up. A tournament is another thing altogether. If the opponents make a shaky game against you in a 6 board cross-IMP tournament, you are virtually out of the tournament so you might as well double because if you set it two or more, you have greatly enhanced your chances of placing near the top. (The same is true to a lesser extent even in a 12 board cross IMPs tourney, especially if the first few boards have been uneventful.) Matchpoint tournaments rate to be a little closer to true form, but here too, in a short tourney, a smart player will make the assumption that his opponents have done the wrong thing, because if that assumption is wrong, he can't win the tournament. I've noticed that other people play wilder in the tourneys than in the Main Bridge club too. If I want a learning experience for either me or partner, I will head straight for the Main Bridge Club and try to find a decent table.

You aren't vulnerable. If 3NT makes, a 3NT contract wins 6 IMPs. If it goes down, it loses 5 IMPs. It's nearly a coin flip. IMO your chances of making 3NT on the lead of LHO's best minor is well less than 50%. Also, when partner is minimum, you're hanging out in 2NT which will go down a good portion of the time. So, I don't see much distinction between non-vul at IMPs and matchpoints. Your point would carry more weight if vulnerable at IMPS, but "We were vulnerable at IMPS" is a statement most frequently heard after the speaker has overbid. :( However, if you're playing Standard (SAYC?), I think partner could have up to 18 for this 2H bid. This is still no excuse to bid 2NT since if partner has near the top of his range, partner will make another move and you will happily bid to or force a game.